There will be blood! Race is on for final seat in Dublin Fingal East

The big news stemming from the August 2023 constituency redraws saw Dublin Fingal split in two; Dublin Fingal West and Dublin Fingal East.

What was a 5-seater at the last general election is now split into two separate 3-seaters.

In terms of the big guns from the 2020 general election, 3 of the 5 TDs elected in Dublin Fingal are contesting Dublin Fingal East.

Swords, Donabate, Malahide and Portmarnock have been split off from the rest of Fingal but at time of going to press, there are no plans to separate East and West Fingal with leftover parts from the Berlin Wall.

Minister for Housing and Fianna Fáil’s own Darragh O’Brien, Fine Gael’s parliamentary chair Alan Farrell and Labour’s health and transport chief Duncan Smith are all fighting for re-election and it is likely to be a topsy-turvy fight.

3-seaters are to an Irish election what the away goals rule is to football; just when you think you have a grasp on things, the script changes.

Using the 2020 general election and the more recent June 2024 local elections as a base, it would appear that Darragh O’Brien has the edge.

O’Brien scored just shy of 16% of first preferences back in 2020, well above Farrell’s 9.8%.

Swords and Howth-Malahide are the local electoral areas that fall within Fingal East, and Fianna Fáil narrowly edged out Fine Gael locally in June.

In Howth-Malahide, Fianna Fáil’s two councillors Cathal Haughey and Eoghan O’Brien (brother of Darragh) received 21% of first preferences compared to Fine Gael’s 19.7% (Aoibhinn Tormey, running in the nearby Dublin Bay North, received 11.3%.)

Farrell was first elected in the 2011 general election, now making him one of Fine Gael’s longest-serving TDs.

With so much of Simon Harris’ campaign revolving around “new energy” (Harris himself was first elected as a TD in 2011, the same year as Farrell), Farrell being so closely tied to Harris is a high risk/high reward strategy. 

Farrell was notably overlooked for a ministers job in April’s reshuffle but the plump job of parliamentary leader means that Farrell has made the rounds for the party in recent months.

In this election, Fine Gael are asking voters to vote for the brand instead of the candidate; this will make Farrell’s re-election campaign a test of his popularity at a local level.

Like O’Brien and Smith before him, Farrell was a councillor before becoming a TD and having a high personal vote is absolutely crucial in a 3-seater.

When the constituency redraws were announced last August, the first instinct was to count Duncan Smith out.

At that time, Labour winning in a 3-seater seemed beyond them but a year is a long time in politics.

Smith has the advantage of not being tied to the 2011-2016 government and won the seat formerly held by his old boss Brendan Ryan back in 2020.

Crucially for Smith, his former local electoral area of Swords has been kept intact (he won two local elections there in 2014 and 2019) which puts him in with a fighting chance.

Labour held onto their seats in Swords and Howth-Malahide in June (6.7% for James Humphreys in Swords compared to Smith’s 2019 haul of 9.8%, and current Fingal County Council mayor Brian McDonagh going from 13% to 10.1).

In both cases, Labour saw parties to their left overtake them and in Smith’s case, it happens to be two candidates who did well in June.

For Smith to hold onto his Dáil seat, he needs to keep ahead of Independents4Change councillor Dean Mulligan and Social Democrats councillor Joan Hopkins and keep his share of first preferences high enough before transfers come into play.

Smith has the small advantage of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael voters being willing to hold their noise and give Smith a preference if it means keeping Sinn Féin or Independents4Change out of the picture.

Mulligan topped the poll in Swords back in June with exactly 2000 votes (or 15.2% of first preferences) and indeed party colleague Clare Daly has opted to run in Dublin Central to allow Mulligan to run in her old stomping ground.

Mulligan actually received more first preferences than Smith back in the 2019 council race and both faced off against each other in the 2019 by-election and the 2020 general election.

November 29 will mark five years to the day since Smith and Mulligan went head-to-head in the Dublin Fingal by-election (which was won by Green Joe O’Brien).

Having the two same candidates face off against each other four times within five years is something that can only happen in Irish politics; we are picturing Wrestlemania 17 where The Rock faced off against Stone Cold Steve Austin.

The 3-seater nature of the constituency means that a big name and big personal vote getter is essential for a win; this will be a big test of whether people are voting for Mulligan or voting for the I4C brand.

By their very nature, 3-seaters aren’t kind to smaller parties like I4C so getting as high a first preference vote as possible is crucial for Mulligan.

The same can be said for Joan Hopkins, who will be looking to win a seat for the Social Democrats.

Like Mulligan, Hopkins topped a 7-seater constituency back in June.

Howth-Malahide was the former constituency of local TD Cian O’Callaghan so a strong Social Democrats vote was expected, but Hopkins managed to improve on O’Callaghan’s 2019 haul where he received 13.7% of first preferences and 2,717 votes.

Hopkins topped the poll in Howth-Malahide in June and was elected on the first count with 3,272 first preferences (or 15.6% of first preferences).

Current polling indicates that the Social Democrats are likely to hold onto all six of their current Dáil seats but if they want to expand their influence a win in Dublin Fingal East would do nicely.

Again, the 3-seater nature of the constituency makes it an uphill battle but Hopkins’ performance in June (and yes, personal popularity) means that the seat could be in play if everything goes right for them on the campaign trail. 

Sinn Féin’s hopes to win a seat here in the hands of councillor Ann Graves.

While Graves didn’t re-election in June, she was co-opted onto Fingal County Council back in August.

Graves’ candidacy is a specific kind of Sinn Féin candidate; the party are asking voters to vote for the party instead of the candidate in this case.

Graves was unsuccessful in her re-election bid in Swords back in June (her party colleague Marian Buckley, who she went on to replace on Fingal County Council, secured 6.7% compared to Graves’ 6.4%) but Sinn Féin did reasonably well locally in June.

In Swords, their three candidates got a combined 15.5% of the vote which would have been enough to top the poll by itself, but was instead distributed among three candidates.

15% of the vote in a 7-seater is a decent base for Sinn Féin to play with.

Things weren’t quite as rosy in Howth-Malahide, where Sinn Féin actually lost votes compared to 2019 – 4.9% of the vote slipped to 4.5% in the locals just gone.

Sinn Féin being outpolled by Labour, the Social Democrats and Independents4Change at a local level isn’t a good omen heading into a general election but even the first week of the campaign has shown that a scandal or two can change the make-up of the race very quickly.

Elsewhere on the ballot, former Green councillor Ian Carey is making a crack at the Dáil having lost his council seat in June, Aontú will be running their local election candidate Margaret McGovern (she won 4.2% of the vote in Howth-Malahide but not a seat) while People Before Profit will be running their Balbriggan candidate Bryn Edwards (who received 3.9% of the vote in Swords but no council seat)

The smaller parties are likely to be eliminated early doors, but their transfers have the potential to shake up the race.

Results from June showed that in general, the Greens gave transfers to either Fine Gael or Labour (yes, really), Aontú’s transfers went to Sinn Féin (yeah, we know), and People Before Profit’s transfers went to the Social Democrats or Sinn Féin.

Dublin Fingal East isn’t likely to go 10 or 12 rounds on election day, but the long and short of it is we expect both O’Brien and Farrell to be returned fairly handy, but the real drama in the seat is the fight for the third and final seat.